


time is flying

by chamelenyoung



Category: GOT7, JJ Project
Genre: Anterograde amnesia!AU, M/M, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:02:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24667300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chamelenyoung/pseuds/chamelenyoung
Summary: It's a carbon copy of a memory Jaebeom's had - a summer day, all the fans in the room going at once, rustling papers, tree pollen and sun thick in the air.
Relationships: Im Jaebum | JB/Park Jinyoung
Comments: 13
Kudos: 37





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _"Time, in and of itself, does nothing...it is merely a dimension along which processes operate."_

It's a carbon copy of a memory Jaebeom's had - a summer day, all the fans in the room going at once, rustling papers, tree pollen and sun thick in the air.

Jinyoung sits on the edge of the windowsill, earbuds stuffed in, occasional humming broken by the sound of blades slicing through sticky air. 

"Hyung, I like this bridge," he murmurs over the white noise, "It flows nice." Jaebeom's gut tightens for maybe the hundredth time he's heard this. Lately, Jaebeom's been writing a lot of songs - a lot that Jinyoung won’t remember - but this song has always paused on the same measure, file still stuck in the same antiquated mp3 player. Jaebeom's never quite been able to move past it.

Maybe it’s because Jaebeom was never its true author: it was the melody he one day came home to, Jinyoung humming it in infinite loops the way he did when something was stuck in his head. Or maybe it's an issue of style - that synthed out, lofty feel that Jinyoung gravitates towards is slipping out of fashion these days.

Jinyoung taps out the rhythm the way he always does, with restless fingers.

If Jaebeom had to pick, this approximation of normalcy is the hardest to let go - convinces him the most that fragments of the old Jinyoung are trapped somewhere, waiting for someone to figure out how to disentangle and pull them back together.

It’s been four years of hospitals, confusion, and stubborn decisions, four years since an invisible sheet of ice on an unsalted road slid an intangibly vital piece of Jinyoung somewhere beyond reach.

He’s achingly the same in so many ways - still lights up at a pleasing tune, leaves his clothes in a heap outside the bathroom when he showers, covers his laughs with his hands.

But small things make him different - apart from the obvious memory loss - enough for Jaebeom to notice even in the snatches of consciousness that make up Jinyoung's days. A slightly misplaced angle when he frowns, the eighth-of-a-beat lag between his footsteps, the moderated quantity of sugar he now dumps in his coffee - it's as if the idiosyncrasies that identify Jinyoung have changed slightly in hue.

Or maybe, from Jinyoung's point of view, he's not the one who's changed, but rather, the rest of the world has moved on in frighteningly sped up fragments. It's like Jinyoung's stuck treading in amber-preserved moments of time but - Jaebeom tries not to let his thoughts spiral down that direction, if he can help it.

"I had a dream like that once," Jinyoung interrupts, the glow of the TV screen they're seated in front of illuminating his face. Jaebeom is watching but not really watching a sitcom rerun, and reels and reels and reels of television ads. Jaebeom had arranged the soundtrack for that show, years ago. He has vague memories of the haze of caffeine, rushed production deadlines, and Jinyoung's voice husky from sleep deprivation as he tried to stay up in solidarity through the long nights.

"A dream?" Jaebeom questions absently, wondering if Jinyoung will finish the thought, or if it will sweep away in another wave of consciousness.

"Yeah," Jinyoung muses, mild wonderment tinting his speech. "It was about flying." 

Jaebeom remembers them last time they flew together. To Jeju, ostensibly on a business trip, where Jaebeom had actually gotten very little done because Jinyoung had been so distractingly relaxed. He remembers how the salty wind had tousled his dark hair, remembers the skin at the junction between Jinyoung's hip and thigh had felt so soft to his fingertips. These thoughts too, Jaebeom tries not to think too often. 

It's occurred to Jaebeom as he robotically shuffles through old playlists, some days, he feels next to nothing. Maybe Jinyoung's not the only one who needs help - but again, he tries not to think about that.

"Everything just reminds me of everything else," Jaebeom confesses, in a rare alcohol-loosened fit of weakness. Nichkhun, a senior songwriter at his company, regards him with that calm concern only he can pull off.

"I can tell," he says dryly. "Your music, it's like - you keep up with all the new trends on the surface, but your soul is always stuck in 90's RnB.”

"It's called having a creative identity," Jaebeom retorts, or maybe slurs. Nichkhun rolls his eyes.

The gentleness with which Nichkhun pries his drink from his fingers loosens something inside Jaebeom. "I’m just afraid that I’ll never feel the same way again." Jaebeom's voice pinches, and he doesn't need to specify further for Nichkhun to understand what he's talking about. It's not the same - they live a neverending copy of their old routine but it will never be the same.

"Come on, Jaebeom. Even you know that even without the accident, there's no way you’d feel exactly how you used to. You’ve changed too." Nichkhun throws him a thoughtful glance. "You're not so - explosive." 

Jaebeom's smile is rather apologetic as he recalls the idealism-driven impulsivity of his youth. Mentors at the company like Nichkhun often were the ones who had to temper his fire before it burned anything irretrievable. He's cooled down since then - whether out of resignation or maturity, he hasn't yet decided.

Jaebeom hails a taxi home to his quiet apartment that night. Jinyoung was still living in a care facility then.

Jaebeom can swear that Jinyoung is still humming a version of that unfinished song when he helps fold the laundry one Saturday morning. Jaebeom's tried asking him before, how he thinks the song should end, but Jinyoung can never quite say. That day, on a whim, Jaebeom dusts off the old acoustic guitar - the one he'd gifted Jinyoung for his twenty-fifth birthday along with some basic exercise books. He settles himself around Jinyoung's shoulders, one hand fingering chords at the neck of the guitar, while Jinyoung's halting strums recreates the tune he had so casually hummed before. 

Some back part of Jaebeom's mind thinks there must be more productive things he could be doing with his time, that this moment is one Jinyoung won't remember anyway. But maybe the hopeless romantic in Jaebeom thinks that somewhere, this makes a tiny difference - that in an invisible way, this holds the connection between them just a little bit tighter.

"Who's this?"

Jaebeom glances up from stirring a pot of jjigae to find Jinyoung regarding a Siamese tabby, perched territorially on top of their dining room table. 

It's Nora. Jaebeom had brought her home to stave off the loneliness. She gives Jinyoung's hand a haughty sniff.

"Cats hate me," Jinyoung considers with soft curiosity, one hand still nursing a cooling cup of coffee.

"She's new." That's not entirely true - Nora had moved in with them over three months ago, but Jaebeom's tired of explaining it. They'd discussed adopting before, casually, when Jinyoung had said Jaebeom had cat-like tendencies. 

"Do you mind?" Jaebeom finds himself asking. The old Jinyoung would have definitely minded.

"Well, it looks like she already knows me." Jinyoung smiles. Jaebeom nearly drops his ladle into the pot when he hears a purr. Jinyoung scratches Nora behind the ears, the way she likes most, in a way Jinyoung's never pet Nora before. Jinyoung chuckles, a low sound. "Maybe we were friends in a past life."

A past life: what an intriguing thought. Or maybe the present, in such an infinite loop, it's as timeless as the unknown before life.

Jaebeom gingerly fishes out the sunken ladle from the bubbling stew. "Cute, huh? She can be a brat though." Jinyoung draws out more purrs and Jaebeom begins to wonder how he had ever deluded himself into thinking his cat showed any special loyalty to him.

"What will you name her?" 

"Name her?" Jaebeom frowns. Jinyoung hums in assent.

Jaebeom hesitates. "What do you think I should name her?"

Jinyoung ponder this question for several moments. "She reminds me of you," he says instead.

The experts tell Jaebeom that Jinyoung will remember everything that's already stored. But memories aren't carved in marble, guarded under lock and key. Some days, Jinyoung is sweet and soft, and curls up against him like he always did. Other days, he suspects Jaebeom's a stranger, as if some part of him realizes he's been trapped.

It starts off a run-of-the-mill day, Jinyoung sleeps in a bit later than he usually does, and when he wakes up, he sits glassy-eyed in a sea of pale sheets. He doesn't take up on Jaebeom's offer to make some coffee for the both of them. He probably should have taken that as a sign.

Moments pass, and Jaebeom thinks nothing of it until he hears a crash from their living room, a bookcase overturns, and Jaebeom whirls at the sound.

Several forceful shoves and a terse phone call later, Mark arrives on their doorstep, takes one look at Jaebeom - on the verge of tears or destruction, he can't choose which - takes stock of the broken glass and books strewn on the floor, and gently leads an agitated Jinyoung by the hand out of the apartment.

Jaebeom stares at one of the books on the floor, open to a page Jinyoung must've lovingly underlined in his university days, pages wrinkled down the middle. 

He glances out the window and catches Mark with his arm around Jinyoung. He can see Jinyoung's shoulders relax almost imperceptibly.

If Jaebeom's honest with himself, he'd always been a bit envious of the way Jinyoung and Mark connected on almost a telepathic wavelength, able to achieve a perception of what the other needed without many question asked, fitting into each other like a hand in a glove.

Jaebeom and Jinyoung had always needed to talk out everything and anything to understand each other. Even now, Jinyoung and Mark had the easier relationship, he thinks to himself bitterly.

But when Mark returns with Jinyoung still in hand, fixing Jaebeom with that searching, intent gaze he usually reserves for small animals and teary toddlers, Jaebeom deflates.

He can’t resent Mark any more than he can resent the outdated wheels of the tires, more than he resents himself for not picking up Jinyoung earlier from the train station. 

When they return, Jaebeom doesn't linger on how the absent smile that Jinyoung - already past the incident - flashes him hurts more than the wild push he gave earlier when Jaebeom tried to place a hand on his shoulder.

Instead, Jaebeom smiles wryly as he returns the wrinkled book to the shelf, remembering how much it would irk him when Jinyoung would abuse the spines of his books and dog-ear the pages, and how Jinyoung was never one for babying his books anyway.

Jaebeom can hear Youngjae, one of the vocalists he writes for, humming to himself from several doors down before he presses the buzzer to their apartment. "Hi hyung!" Youngjae waves, setting Coco down on the carpet who promptly runs to Jinyoung. Jaebeom can see Jinyoung tensing partly at the white ball of fur making a beeline for him, but mostly at the way Youngjae navigates the broken handle of their shoe cupboard with ease.

"One of your students?" Jinyoung asks, unease beginning to brew in his pupils.

Youngjaes freezes, one shoe still on his foot. "Shoot, sorry hyung - I forgot. I come here almost every day, I keep thinking that maybe -"

Jaebeom holds his breath, preparing for a scene. "Jinyoung, this is Youngjae, one of my - er, yes, - students. he's been here a few times - when you were out -"

"It's okay." Jinyoung accepts this with surprising readiness. "I'll be in the next room." He always escaped when Jaebeom used to tutor music theory to pay the bills, claiming the droning on about intervals and chord progressions smothered him.

A few minutes later, Jaebeom peeks through the crack of the glass sliding door between their living room and sun room. He finds Jinyoung fast asleep, summer highlighting red into his hair, the arm of the couch barely catching his leaning weight.

Youngjae seems to find this unusually funny. "See, I told you he remembers me," he jests, amusement tempered by the hesitation in the upturn of his lips.

Jaebeom snorts and musses Youngjae's hair. "Who wouldn't? The neighbors' pets probably know you by voice by now."

In the early days, Jaebeom used to record everything obsessively - everything Jinyoung said or did or interacted with - volumes of history, timestamped and dated. Those diaries are still somewhere in their bookcase, but cataloging too was a habit that drifted away. At some point, Jaebeom realized that no matter to what detail he penned those memories, they lost a bit of color, honed in on certain angles, became a little less like the original - each time he recalled them. Each time he remembers something, there is a shift: things are snipped, pasted in without his permission.

When bitter coffee hits Jaebeom's tongue and he hears the timbre of Jinyoung's exhaustion-laden voice, isn't the memory infiltrated with the deeper wrinkles that have now started to line Jinyoung's eyes? When Jaebeom's eyes catch on the shell of Jinyoung's ear, he feels that quiet longing, a feeling he believes is as old as his recollections of Jinyoung, but now he wonders if that yearning has really been the exact same flavor since the very beginning.

Jinyoung, too used to write proliferatively, if not rather obsessively. It has always been a fascination of his - of both of theirs - in evoking memory and emotion: brushing at little bits of thought imprinted here and there, in sight, sound, touch, looking for the strand they could pull to lift out the entire, dripping web. There are probably drafts of Jinyoungs novel's collecting dust (or the electronic equivalent of it), but Jaebeom doesn't touch the files because Jinyoung always hated it when he read his unfinished works. Those stories, along with Jinyoung's ideas for finishing them, exist in the same kind of unconstructed limbo.

In his more brazen youth, Jaebeom had chased recognition, intent on leaving his mark in history, to sear his name into _something_. Now, in the private moments only he will remember - when Jinyoung makes his understated, dry comments, when Jaebeom accidentally sets a potholder in flames - he realizes how painless it will be for his existence to quietly slip from human memory.

One day, if younger ears listen to his songs, will they flip to the credits and wonder what that composer had heard, who he had been with, to have joined together that particular pair of words? How many memories will die with him? How many had already worn thin, sinking their loose fibers into more well-remembered threads?

Jaebeom startles awake one morning to the clatter of keyboard keys coming from the living room, and he's convinced he's still dreaming.

He pads into the living room, half-awake, to a scene that predominates his older memories of Jinyoung. He's slouched in a sofa, beaten-up laptop perched on the arm, picking out words and phrases as he bites his lip. The air smells mild and clean. He looks so at home that Jaebeom's feet turn leaden - he can't move for fear of breaking the spell. Did time stop?

The moment unsticks and Jinyoung gazes up at Jaebeom, expression distant, as if his awareness was still travelling back from someplace unimaginable, his smaller frame swamped in one of Jaebeom's old sweatshirts.

In the autumn, as blazing leaves drop from trees, Jaebeom allows some of his inhibitions to fall away with them. One September day, the temperature climbs to almost balmy levels, and Jaebeom piles them into a borrowed pickup truck to take Jinyoung on a hiking trip. He's resisted the idea of travel for so long - so many unknowns had the potential to trigger unpleasantness - but Minjun had forced them both out of the apartment, telling Jaebeom to, quote, "Stop kicking up dust and gluing yourself to the guilt."

Jaebeom sets out with apprehension and no expectations, but Jinyoung seems to be enjoying himself immensely.

And Jaebeom might understand why. For once, Jaebeom realizes, time is linear.

Jinyoung is walking, memory cuts and fades, but he is still walking forward, upward. 

"I've always meant to ask you to go hiking with me," Jaebeom confides, "But it always seemed a little too slow to be something you'd like."

"I like slow, sometimes." Then, "Do you remember that thriller I tried writing once?"

Jaebeom does, vaguely. He had been mildly alarmed by the macabre search tabs Jinyoung had left open on his laptop.

"It was a romance - this guy walks straight into a murder plot while on a hiking trip, and meets a mysterious savior. I knew exactly how to begin and end it, it was just everything else in the middle that was murky." He pauses with a sheepish look." And I started getting nightmares."

Jaebeom hadn't known any of this. "Well," He never had more than an inkling of an idea of what Jinyoung was writing until he finished it. "You're safe here. With me."

"I am," Jinyoung agrees, smiling with every ounce of sincerity and radiance from every memory Jaebeom's ever had of him.

Jaebeom, not for the first time tries to scry their future. 

This, he senses, will be an enduring memory. Not a heavy one, impossible to pick up and even harder to suppress - or a light one, so infinitesimally weighted your heart aches. Just a regular, smooth, fingerprint-less memory you might drop one day and inhale deeply when you pick it up, not quite remembering what was said, but feeling impressions of things - like the leaf-filtered light, reflected in Jinyoung's dark irises, the tiny particles of dust in the air, the petriochor rising from the moss, the feeling of shade-cooled must between his hands.

Time is following them, as parched grass releases scent that mellows, as the shadows growing long and lilacy. 

Honey streams through tree branches and unconsciously, Jaebeom realizes he's already smiled back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A tiny part of my soul withers each time I witness jinyoung (man)handle his books


	2. repose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a fluffy drabble to temper the angst ;-;

Summer blazes fierce on the latest afternoon of the three-day heatwave searing through Seoul. The fumes of melting asphalt burn into the hot rubber smell of Jaebeom’s car, all intermingling with the leathery sandalwood of the heady cologne Jackson - who has been calling Mark _baobei_ for the last six months - likes to wear.

Mark, in one of his ever-frequent fits of loquaciousness, prattles on about the some of the specialty red wines he'd brought back from California, where he and Jackson had recently returned from his sister's wedding.

"What are you collecting wines for, Mark?" Jaebeom chastises, but picks up bottle to inspect the label with interest. "You're even more of a lightweight than Jinyoung."

Mark, temporarily pausing his explanation of why the tannins and savory notes of this red are unique, is unfazed. "So you can help me finish them."

When Jinyoung hadn't recognized some of his university friends and relatives who had visited him those first few months after the accident, Jaebeom was amazed that Jinyoung woke up remembering most mornings why he and Jaebeom live together. Mark and Jinyoung's mysterious telepathy-thing could only explain why Jinyoung always remembers to call him 'hyung'.

What Jaebeom fails to fathom, however, is why Jinyoung gravitates towards Jackson, a complete and utter stranger.

"See, you pull the stroke down, after the two horizontal lines -" Jackson is, inexplicably, teaching Jinyoung how to trace the hanja for the word 'dog' on a stray edge of magazine.

"Jackson," Mark can't help but comment, "Is that going to work?"

"No, _ge_ ," Jackson whispers away from Jinyoung, "I've read papers about this - amnesiacs can learn to do mazes and shit - it's called - what is it called?" He pulls up an article on his phone and waves it in front of Jaebeom’s face. "'Nondeclarative memory'. Procedural stuff is stored differently in the brain. he could probably learn how to ride a unicycle, if he wanted to."

Jaebeom doesn't particularly think Jinyoung has ever had such inclinations, but he keeps that to himself. Instead, he asks, "What does he need to know how to write that for anyway, Jackson? When is that ever going to be useful?"

"What is he going to do with half a song written in 2014, hyung?" Jackson counters with surprising aim. "Have you thought about that? Why don't you just finish it and load it back into that ancient mp3 player already?"

Whatever the reason for Jinyoung's fondness for the Hong Kongese marketing specialist, Jaebeom often catches the pair of them collapsed into Jackson and Mark's sofa cushions, shoulders convulsing in the kind of raucous laughter he rarely hears in their own quiet apartment.

It reminds Jaebeom that Jinyoung is the baby of three in his family. He used to lay out that high-spirited side, early in their relationship, before he mellowed out. But, Jaebeom realizes, just because Jaebeom doesn't often try to draw it out, it doesn't mean this playful side of Jinyoung doesn't still lie dormant.

Sometimes laughter bubbles out of Jinyoung just from the way Jackson makes faces at Jaebeom behind his back.

Jinyoung's consciousness lives in forty or so second stints. It might be a trick of perception, but Jaebeom senses the window drawing incrementally closer every year. This hasn't been a problem for Jackson, though, who can deliver a setup, punchline, and leave space for reaction in less than that time. Sometimes, when Jaebeom overhears their conversations, he can't even pick out what exactly has them dissolving into giggles. But if it makes Jinyoung happy, he can't complain.

When Jinyoung finishes the Chinese character for the the dozenth time, Jackson brandishes the sheet of paper. "See, hyung?" His look is one of complete triumph, " _See_?" It might have been a bit neater than Jinyoung's first tries.

"Don't tire him out too much, Jackson,“ Jaebeom cautions, "Last time - "

"Go away, hyung." Jinyoung waves off, and Jaebeom surrenders, accepting Mark's dry smile and sampling of one of the ruby-colored wines Jaebeom had shown interest in, the hum of the cicadas easing in the humid summer evening.


End file.
